1. Technical Field
The present invention related to a printing support system, a printing support program, and a printing support method. In particular, the invention relates to a printing support system for reducing an environmental load, a printing support program for reducing an environmental load, and a printing support method for reducing an environmental load, which can reduce the occurrence of misprint by demanding a user to confirm a print setting state and thus can reduce the environmental load.
2. Related Art
In conventional printing technologies, there has been a problem in that paper or ink is wasted due to misprint caused by a document data creation error or a print setting error. A system for solving the problem includes a printing system disclosed in JP-A-2004-330639 and an image forming system disclosed in JP-A-6-227006.
The printing system disclosed in JP-A-2004-330639 includes a print request input unit through which a print request according to a predetermined printing condition is input, an acquiring unit that acquires the number of printed sheets of printing paper, a memory unit that stores environment resource consumption information in respect to an amount of environment resources consumed by using a predetermined number of sheets of printing paper, a consumed resource amount calculation unit that calculates information in respect to the amount of environment resources consumed when the printing paper in which the number of sheets corresponds to the requested number of sheets to be printed has been used, an image forming unit that forms an image indicating the amount of consumed resources, and a display control unit that displays the image.
Further, in the image forming system disclosed in JP-A-6-227006, paying attention to a characteristic of a textile printing apparatus in which a basic pattern is repeated, the number of printing dots on each ink color is calculated on the basis of print data by which the basic pattern is formed. In addition, on the basis of the print data, the amount of consumption or the cost of expendable supplies, such as a head or ink, is calculated.
A default print setting may be made through a printer driver. Accordingly, by setting multi-pages on a sheet of paper or double-sided printing as a default, it is possible to save printing paper and ink.
However, in many cases, a user that routinely performs a print operation does not sufficiently check what the default print setting state is and performs a print operation by clicking a print start button on a print dialog screen of a printer driver through consecutive input operations, such as consecutive clicking operations. For this reason, in the case in which a user intends to perform single-sided printing even though double-sided printing is set as a default, the double-sided printing process is performed due to the user's negligent and consecutive clicking operations, which results in misprint. In this case, paper, ink, or the like is wasted, which consequently affects the environmental resources.
Further, in the printing system disclosed in JP-A-2004-330639, even though the image that indicates the amount of resources consumed when the printing paper of which the number of sheets corresponds to the requested number of sheets to be printed has been used can be displayed, there is the same problem as described above for a user that performs the consecutive input operations, such as consecutive clicking operations.
Furthermore, in the image forming system disclosed in JP-A-6-227006, even though the amount of consumption or the cost of expendable supplies can be calculated, there also occurs the same problem as described above only with the calculation on the amount of consumption or the cost of expendable supplies.